Movies
I dunno if I have a ton more to say than everyone has already hashed out ad nauseum, but this was super bad. Simultaneously overlong and rushed, too fan-servicey and not validating enough of the fan commitment to the franchise, mind-numbingly illogical and yet somehow too obsessed with explaining the connection between everything—and above all, just flabbergastingly, stupifyingly dumb, especially in regards to its characters. This sequel trilogy has been far from perfect, but one thing I liked from the get-go is the ways in which its core cast consists of characters who are uneasy with the archetypes that the mythic tropes of the franchise have given them, which, at some of the trilogy's better moments (Finn's abandonment of the First Order in The Force Awakens, Kilo Ren's disillusionment with the Jedi/Sith binary and Rey's discovery that her parents are "nobodies" in The Last Jedi), has given the trilogy the feeling of these people not just doing the whole Joseph Campbell "Refusal of the Call" thing but full-on fighting the meta-authority of the oppressive mandates of their own franchise—a delicious and cosmic (if inconsistently implemented) idea that's super interesting. But Rise of Skywalker throws all that out; Rey just becomes Luke 2.0, Kilo just becomes Vader 2.0, etc., and we're treated to a very dull and undercooked retread of some of Return of the Jedi's more iconic structures without the benefit of the weight that a trilogy of well-crafted characters would lend those structures. I do think people are a little bit over-stating the extent to which this movie "undoes" The Last Jedi (though there are inarguably a few tweaks, most notably the capriciously diminished role of Kelly Marie Trans—Keri Russell's masked newcomer, whom we know and care nothing about, gets exponentially more screentime, for example, and I'm crying foul). Because of the proxy war against toxic fans that most of these movies are forced to be weapons in, people don't seem to remember (or like to bring up) that The Last Jedi itself walks back a good deal of its subversiveness in its final act, and Rey's embrace of the musty mythic hero archetype at the end of that movie probably laid a lot more ground work for the dull pileup of lazy character beats in The Rise of Skywalker than people would like to admit. Still, surely there was a way to leverage the somewhat conventional landing of The Last Jedi into a more interesting movie than this. Even reliable staples of excellence within the Star Wars franchise like creature design and the John Williams score are asleep at the wheel here, and this is probably the ugliest, most visually anonymous of the numbered Star Wars episodes (though I still think Solo takes the cake for the franchise overall). I can't say that I'm disappointed, both because I waited long enough before seeing this that I basically had heard a bunch of the fan grumbling beforehand and also because I've been only tepidly a Star Wars fan since the prequels shook me out in middle school. But at least the prequels were full of good ideas (albeit muddled with dodgy execution). The Rise of Skywalker is just bad ideas executed badly. Grade: C-
Some of this meandered in a way I didn't entirely think was productive—e.g. the running thread about the Guggenheim Fellowship—but the cast is uniformly excellent, and the "wedding" scene is one of the best movie scenes of 2019. Also, while it's definitely more of the "point-and-shoot" style of modern American indie films than some wildly formally inventive movie a la Gaspar Noé or Bi Gan, Lulu Wang's direction is still way more full of ideas than its "heartwarming family indie" milieu necessitates: not just the showy scenes like the pivoting camera at the circular wedding table moment or the slow-motion sequences but also small touches like the stark and subtly striking ways that the characters are blocked so close to the camera in several scenes. Good stuff. Grade: B+
It's a little hard to review these movies individually, both because it's more about the decades-spanning scope of the project than any one entry and also because it's been a long time since I've seen the last installment (not quite the seven years that people watching this series in real time had, but not too far off either). So I don't really know if 35 Up is any better or worse than 28 Up—though it definitely feels less game-changing, mostly because the ways that the subjects have grown isn't quite so stark as in 28 Up. But these individuals have also grown into increasingly more intense versions of themselves, usually skewing toward either more self-reflexivity or more resolute acceptance of the increased stasis of their circumstances, and both make for some fascinating, soulful interviews. As with 28 Up, Neil is the one who sticks out most here, given his physically/mentally dire straights and philosophically minded answers to the film's questions. Really good to see the guy doing a bit better than he was in the last movie, although it's still heartbreaking to hear him talk with such frankness about his realistic prospects as an economically unstable man with mental illness in the early '90s. Grade: B+
First things first: this movie is, like, stunningly similar to The Irishman, right? An aging filmmaker of Italian heritage makes a ridiculously long, deliberately slow movie in which an aging Robert De Niro reflects back with some regret over his life in organized crime and the way it has had repercussions on his relationships with the women in his life and also on a close male friend (who is also deeply connected with the Teamsters' union)? Just wanted to throw that out there since I haven't seen a ton of people make the connection. At any rate, unlike The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in America unfortunately finds none of its major talents (except maybe De Niro, who is stellar here) consistently at the heights of their abilities. Ennio Morricone, for example, gives a score that is uncharacteristically drippy for long stretches, and Sergio Leone himself drains his direction of virtually all of the giddiness of his westerns in the interest of delivery a Stately and Important Movie that nonetheless wallows in some of his worst impulses as a director, such as his pretty callous attitude toward his female characters—the movie undeniably paints it as a Bad Thing that, for example, one of our main characters rapes not one but two women (in scenes of punishing length, no less, practically wallowing in the ugliness and pain), but resolutely frames these rapes in terms of how bad they are for the rapist (he loses his girlfriend! oh no!), barely giving a passing glance at the psychological toll on the women. At the same time, not having these talents consistently at the heights of their abilities doesn't mean that they can't be inconsistently at the heights of their powers, and there are definitely stretches of Once Upon a Time in America where it achieves with stunning success the towering grandeur of its vision: a movie in which intimate personal drama and widescreen historical sweep intersect to form a dazzling work reminiscent of that old era of classic Hollywood epics like Doctor Zhivago. Morricone's score may turn to syrup more often than not, but it is also capable of moments of sublimely classical beauty; Leone's direction may have none of the zip of something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but it preserves what is probably Leone's signature directorial flourish, which is the willingness to pull and stretch a dialogue-free scene to such excruciating lengths that it becomes a nearly abstract collage of long takes, repeated sounds, and potent silences. There are definitely scenes here—none of them with much dialogue—that rank among the best that Leone ever did, and that's enough to gesture tantalizingly at the great cinematic statement on American history and masculinity a la The Godfather Part II that Once Upon a Time in America could have been. Instead, we got this deeply flawed opus that's as ugly and imperfect as it is beautiful—I mean, I guess "THAT'S AMERICA, kids," and maybe it's just my tragic internalizing of American myth that makes me want this to be less compromised than the country it claims to embody. But hey, I'm American, too, so lemme keep reachin' for that dream, baby. Grade: B
Books
This isn't an encyclopedia, don't worry. It's actually a graphic novel about storytelling and myth and folklore, and I thought it was great! In the tradition of ancient epic poetry, it follows around a hero on a quest (in this case, a boy looking for his other half—it's a little complicated) that frequently takes breaks to digress into the deep past and the mythologized sociopolitical history of the lands the hero travels through. These digressions themselves are infused with echoes of the mythology from our real world, with echoes of Genesis and The Odyssey and all sorts of other ancient stories. The result is a book that has the texture of Tolkien in the sense that its own lore feels real and profound, having found just the right balance of original material and established folkloric flavors to scan as "authentically" mythic. Some of the end feels rushed—I would have happily read another 100 pages, and that's probably what the book needed—but overall, it's very cool and very fun. Grade: A-
Music
There's nothing particularly special about DARK THOUGHTS (either here nor in 2018's AT WORK), but they do this whole Ramones-y raggedy pop-punk thing pretty well, and at only 19 minutes, they know exactly how long to hang around before they wear out their welcome. The closer (and title track) is retroactively one of my favorite songs of 2019, too. Grade: B
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